Baxter Memorial Library
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| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Type | Public |
| Established | 1908 |
| Location | Gorham, Maine |
| Collection | |
| Size | 36,000 |
| Access and use | |
| Circulation | 96,000 |
| Population served | 16,381 |
| Other information | |
| Budget | $442,645 (2016) |
| Director | Pam Turner |
| Staff | 11 |
| Website | www |
Coordinates: 43°40′37″N 70°26′30″W / 43.677°N 70.4417°W
The Baxter Memorial Library is the public library serving Gorham, Maine. It was built in 1908. The gift of James Phinney Baxter, the library building is constructed of pink granite and the interior is completed in red oak. In 2003, a 10,000 square feet (930 m2) addition became the primary library.
This library was given by the widow and son of the late General Horace Henry Baxter, a native of Vermont, who spent many years of his life within its borders, and who was pre-eminently identified with the railroad, marble and banking business of Rutland.
The building is in the Romanesque style of architecture, and finely proportioned. The native, gray marble of which it is built is rock-faced throughout, except where carvings relieve this rugged finish around the cornices and the doors. Within, there is a central book room with shelving arranged in semicircular alcoves, two reading rooms on either side, the librarian’s office, and in the hall, a winding staircase leads to the tower, from which can be obtained a view of the city, nestled in its broad valley.
It has about 12,000 books. It is not a circulating library, but a library of reference, and its collection, though comparatively small, is choice and remarkably catholic in the wide range of subjects that it covers. Indeed the library is in some sense a double memorial, as the selection of the books was the work of the last five years of the life of Walter H. Pomeroy, who died before the library was opened to the public. The collection may be largely grouped under four heads, art, books relating to our own country, rare books, and books with rare bindings.
The library has a large and choice collection of Bibles, including Pius sixth’s Latin Bible, printed in Basle in 1551, or another Vulgate edition sanctioned by Clement the VIII, and dated 1647. There is a Myles Coverdale Bible, “faithfully translated from the Hebrewe and Greeke," which bears the imprint, London 1535, and this is another English Bible of 1599.
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